I applied through my university's job search portal. I had all but forgotten about it when a month and a half later I was invited for a phone interview with Dennis Davis, the director of organizational development. I got to meet Dennis in person too, and he was a very kind person and helpful in telling me everything about the company and showing me around their new office, but the interview itself raised some red flags. For the phone interview, he ended up calling approximately 40 minutes later than our appointed time - with a 1 minute prior notification. As much as I try to be understanding that things change in a fast paced environment, I was left with an impression of complete disregard of my time - he proceeded to talk "to", rather than "with" me for the next 2 and a half hours, at which point I had to ask to end the conversation as I had already run late for my next engagement by a half hour.
Anyway, I did get invited to an in-person interview. It was a series of 3: with Dennis, with the COO, and with the CEO (the COO and the CEO are married). All 3 consisted of the same behavioral questions and had me solve some problem, which felt very redundant. In my last interview, with the CEO, he asked me to make up a quadratic equation for a problem and solve it on a white board, which I did not expect and I struggled with. Although I question the applicability of this skillset for the job as described, I do understand the CEO's desire to work with technically-minded people, and it was perhaps a good way to filter me out. What was a bigger red flag though was the fact that when he saw me struggling he very literally walked up to me, wiped my last line on the board out, took the marker from my hands, and proceeded to patronize me on how I should have solved it instead. After this he appeared completely disinterested in anything I had to say and tried to wrap up the interview as soon as he could. Dennis had cautioned me that he came across as a very direct person multiple times before that, which was a red flag on its own, but I did not understand that to mean disrespectful.
Ultimately, I was not offered the position with the reason that they had a better qualified candidate, which is just fine with me.
P.S. On the way out, Dennis was kind enough to show me around their new office. Consider this: this is a pharma company with only 1 drug in Phase I trials. Neither this drug nor any of the others in their pipeline has anything to do with surgery, but they had, in their new building, not 1 but 2 primate surgical theaters built "for when we need them". They also had a quarter of the building dedicated to become an employee gym. The world could surely use the drugs they are working on, and I wish them the best of luck, but it all very much seemed just like the next Silicon Valley company drinking way too much of their own kool aid.
